I went to see these bands yesterday at The Knitting Factory in Williamsburg, as I won free tickets from Facebook. I love free tickets, but come on, who doesn’t?

Of course, I was late like an hour and I missed the first band – Soft Bullets. I can’t tell nothing about them, but as I heard from Casie, a PR chick from Georgia I met smoking in front of the venue, they were pretty decent – two piece act, with Muse alike vocals.

However, I came just in time for Jeff Beam and I enjoyed their show… it was not too long so it didn’t bored me, the vocals were mellow and the guys were good musicians. I’m not big at psych-rock at all, but I had a good time.

Around 10:30 it was time for the headliners – the canadians from Wintersleep. The indie rockers are def from a cold cold place, Nova Scotia… What I can say about their gig? Very strong beginnings of the songs, beautiful, mellow male vocals again… this is not my typical style of music, but it was nice… I got a little bit bored at some point, but I get much more bored on a lot of shows so this was alright. The vocal – Paul Murphy is the biggest sweetheart ever!!! &&& I like the post-rock influence, yes!

Ahh… Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” is so damn nice, especially on a rainy night like tonight, when on two-three Valerian pills your heart goes back to its normal rhythm… And a glass of Dewars with three ices please. And the rain shouldn’t stop at least until tomorrow morning. And yeah… I’m gonna write something about OKCupid soon. I promise.

I just found this really cool blog about “the ghosts” of New York – the remains of different periods, through which the city went. Here is for example a menu of “a sophisticated restaurant” in Chinatown from the 1960’s… probably pretty close to the Chow Mein Henry Miller was ordering with his muse June…

Couple of months ago I met Sto @ a Babycastles event, where he had a weird noise music performance with a shopping cart he probably stole for his project Stolen Temple Pileups. I forgot to ask him is it really stolen, but anyway we met, smoked together and I interviewed him.

Couple of days after, he called me back and invited me to participate in the filming of the new Man Forever video. I said “Yes, I’m down”. At the charming studio above Williamsburg Music Hall I met him this time as Sto – the artist with the haunting spirals, that you follow with your eyes until you lose where they go. May be you recognize his distinctive style, from the backstage mural of 285 Kent?

We were filming the new video for Man Forever – equally abstract drone band, brainchild of Kid Millions from Oneida. In the highly experimental and meditative project he’s also joined by Richard Hoffman from Sightings, the drummer of Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Brian Chase, the bassist of Vampire Weekend – Chris Baio, Greg Fox from Liturgy and Guardian Angel, Sarah Richardson from The Creeping Nobodies and few others – some of the musicians you’ll see in the video of “Ur eternity“.

& While you’re getting hypnotized under the repetative drum rhytmes Sto starts adding colors to his painting, people appear and disappear with or without cameras, musicians are tunning and plugging in their guitars, chatting while drumming & the spirals keep going on and on and on.

Here is the video itself. Nick Chatfield-Taylor aka Catfish did a great job putting everything together and directing this drone madness. And I’m glad to participate in it.

Vice’s trip to Liberia is the most shocking movie I’ve seen in a very long time. Its so horriying and you can’t believe that this happening in the 21st century, the era of the relatively affordable Louis Vuitton bags, genetically-modified chickens, Android applications. Of course, don’t forget that Facebook’s stocks were trading for more than the shares of the largest extractor of natural gas in the world – Russian Gazprom.

And while we’re sitting with the organic, farm-grown products in our fridges, hands on our laptops, clothing “Made in China/Vietnam/Cambodia or even furher and wondering should we go see that show tomorrow, someone is paying the price. Of course, someone has to. We were just lucky. So far.

Make the conclusions and the connections yourself. I’m sure you can.

20:55:

“Vice: So at one point America came to try to get you to go to Iraq?

General Rambo: Yes, the people sent people here. Because, you know, Liberia, back in the days we used to be called “Small America”. And all our training we took was under America. Strictly American. So we call ourselves as the reserve soldiers of America”